


towards the storm

by Contra



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Psychological Torture, Unhealthy Relationships, this is not supposed to be romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 09:45:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13268853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Contra/pseuds/Contra
Summary: Kylo Ren sees no difference between love and ownership and Poe falls apart only slightly faster than the rest of the world. //Or: The Force is nothing but hunger.





	towards the storm

**Author's Note:**

> Okay SOOOO  
> in my defense: I wanted to write something about how Poe's inability to trust people in TLJ is probably based on him having his mind invaded by Kylo Ren and not trusting himself and it somehow turned into this.
> 
> I obviously don't think this is a healthy dynamic to have or want this to become canon in any way. The thought just didn't leave me and so I wrote it.
> 
> It's kinda fucked up. 
> 
> Also I don't like Kylo and I'm pretty sure this isn't even remotely close to movie!Kylo, because the vibes I get from movie!Kylo is whiny teenager whose "good side" Disney will discover through the sheer power of heterosexual romance and this, uh... isn't that.

When Poe gets captured, everything spins. His head is hurting and the sinking feeling in his stomach is bottomless, aching. It doesn’t matter, he tries to tell himself, the map matters, only the map, and if he can distract the First Order long enough, lie well enough, BB-8 might just make it. Just stay calm, this is alright.

The truth – raging, desperate – clawing itself out of the depth of his chest:

but I want-

I want to live.

 

Where is the rebel base? Kylo Ren asks and he sounds completely casual, a bit bored really.

Poe shakes his head. This is the third day. On the first, Kylo Ren took the map. On the second, he took Poe’s wrists and his chest and his forehead and added electrodes, watching as Poe spasmed for hours, forcing himself into Poe’s mind for nothing but the terrified pain of it. This is the third day.

Kylo breathes in calmly. Extends his hand.

His mind is like slimy sort of worm, digging deeper and deeper into Poe, foreign and moving and ice cold.

Where is the rebel base?

Kylo breathes out calmly.

Poe struggles to resist. It hurts-

Kylo breathes in calmly.

Kylo breathes out calmly.

Poe is drenched in sweat. His breath is a wild staccato of

it hurts it hurtsit _hurtshurtshurts_

Kylo breathes in calmly.

D’Qar.

 

You are nothing, Kylo says afterwards. Not like an insult, just like a fact.

Poe knows he’s lying, because he can barely think through the feeling of pain, of violation. Nothing doesn’t hurt.

 

He’s back in his tiny holding cell, shivering with exhaustion. It’s only been three days and already it feels like the world consists entirely of the tiny prison quarters, the narrow stretch of corridor outside and the interrogation room.

Poe tries to imagine Yavin. Poe tries to imagine flying. I wish I could fly again, he thinks, and then like a desperate animal he falls into the lethal pit of hoping, the paradoxical trap of thinking about getting away.

There is no one coming for me, he tries to tell himself. There’s no way out, it doesn’t matter.

But I am-

I am alive.

 

 

What do you know about the Force? Kylo Ren asks the next day. Poe thinks about Luke Skywalker and hope and home. He thinks it with the tiny, isolated, private part of his brain that Kylo Ren hasn’t touched yet.

Fuck the Force, he answers.

It seeks balance, Kylo Ren explains patiently, ignoring Poe's reply. That’s the only thing it cares about. Always taking as much as it’s giving. Always giving the opposite of what you’re having. Always letting live as much as it kills. Do you understand what that means?

Poe – beaten, scared, trapped, but breathing – shakes his head.

(What is the opposite of dying?)

Kylo Ren smiles without the slightest trace of humor. It means that there is someone coming to rescue you.

(What is the opposite of dying?)

It makes a mix of competing emotions explode in Poe, ranging from fearful distrust to the unquenchable burst of joy at the thought that _the resistance remembers me there is really a whole wide universe outside of this and someone remembers me someone else is alive out there  
_

(What is the opposite of dying?

What is the opposite of dying?)

Oh no, Kylo says. No one like that.

(Is it hope?)

 

It’s one of Hux’s Troopers, Kylo Ren informs him, never trusted them much either way. He’s planning to rebel. The Force is strong with him.

Poe closes his eyes. He sees rows upon rows of Stormtroopers, white-helmed, expendable.

And somewhere in there, humanity. I’m sorry, Poe thinks. I’m so sorry it will end like this.

 

Don’t worry about him, Kylo Ren says in a voice that is not the least bit reassuring. He will take what is his to take and leave. That is the way of the Force.

What does that- Poe is about to start asking, when he thinks of the resistance. Thinks about landing on that airfield, seeing his friends again, thinks about home.

The First Order shoots its own Stormtroopers if they come into direct non-combat related contact with suspected Resistance supporters out of fear of double agents.

Kylo Ren, not happy, but somewhat amused.

Kylo Ren, who can read Poe's thoughts now.

 

I’d die before I let that happen, Poe says before he can stop himself.

Thinks, I would, I would, I _could._

You didn’t listen, did you? Kylo Ren’s voice is passive, like he’s talking to a stubborn child he doesn’t want to get angry at. The Force won’t let you. It needs balance. It needs to _eat_.

Kylo Ren extends his hand again with a dismissive gesture and reaches into the inside of Poe’s being.

Everything is on fire.

This is who you are, says Kylo Ren.

There is no courage, there are no convictions. There is no hope.

Everything is burning, burning, burning.

All Poe can feel is – but I want

I want to live.

 

Kylo Ren takes Poe apart like a piece of not particularly complex machinery. Here are the childhood memories. Here are the secret fears. Here are the hidden desires.

Here am I, he writes into every one of them. Here is Kylo Ren.

 

Kylo Ren in the boy what was Ben Organa during a festival on Yavin when Poe was thirteen.

Kylo Ren in the Resistance X-Wing on the first mission Poe ever got to fly.

Kylo Ren, hot and sick and slick, unmasked as the abstract lust object of every teenage fantasy, Kylo Ren as every faceless monster in every nightmare Poe ever had. Kylo Ren replacing the faces of long-lost friends in fading memories and Kylo Ren waiting at every airfield he ever will land on, Kylo Ren’s voice in distant thunder Kylo Ren Kylo Ren Kylo Ren.

 

Like a thin film that covers everything. Like a parasite. Like atoms.

 

You are nothing, Kylo Ren says again.

This time Poe believes him.

 

The rest is all very easy.

FN-2187 (Finn) is good down to his core. The TIE fighter is perfectly stealable. The opposite of dying is living.

Living is breath after breath after breath.

 

Kylo Ren finds the resistance base in the blink of an eye and starts a war of the whole universe that some manage to escape while others are swallowed by darkness.

Rey kills him on a nameless moon with nothing but stars above them to hear the electric singing of a lightsaber cutting a heart.

The Force is everywhere and forever. It eats and it eats and it eats.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Watch this wonderful vid of Oscar Isaac singing to cheer urself up.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWJz_-hseJQ)
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> Feedback is a wonderful alternative to screaming into the void!


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